Pavel filed a jurisdictional lawsuit after the government announced that it did not count on his participation in the NATO summit in July, where he wanted to go.
“This is an important summit, the government simply feels the need to defend its position at such an important event, it has nothing to do with who determines and does not determine what to whom. So the president decided to go the confrontational route,” Macinka told reporters in the Chamber on Tuesday.
He denied that the president would try to agree on his role at the NATO summit, as Pavel stated this morning in his statement on filing a lawsuit on social networks. “I remember at the beginning of April a very sharply worded letter to Mr. Prime Minister, which looked definitely completely different from what the agreement should look like,” declared Macinka.
He also rejected the head of state’s argument that the country was always represented by the president at similar events. According to Macinka, this habit was created by the government, but it did not deprive it of the authority and possibility to decide who will represent the Czech Republic at which meeting.
“Politicians should not take themselves to court, they should not file competence lawsuits against themselves and they should not send criminal reports against themselves in the sense of exercising those powers,” said Macinka, who in this context also recalled the earlier investigation of sharp text messages that the minister sent to the Castle.
At the same time, he repeated his position that he considers the head of state to be a representative of the opposition. “He has been mentioning for a long time in his statements that he wants to balance and ideologically, programmatically and politically balance the government, in other words, that he is in the role of the leader of the Czech opposition,” concluded the minister.
“I’m sorry. Lawsuits usually don’t solve anything. This applies in civil disputes and it also applies in jurisdictional disputes,” responded Minister of Justice Jeroným Tejc (non-partisan for ANO) to the president’s lawsuit.
According to him, he sees nothing in the whole matter other than the fact that the government and the prime minister want to present their arguments and policies themselves and that they want them to have room for negotiations with the leaders. He does not think that Babiš’s cabinet would in any way prevent the president from representing the state externally.
He also reminded, similar to Babiš on Monday, that Petr Pavel made a number of foreign visits during the mandate of the current government and that he will represent the Czech Republic at the UN General Assembly in New York. “So I don’t feel that it would be necessary for this matter to end up at the Constitutional Court,” Tejc told Novinkám.
He believes that the lawsuit itself and the subsequent decision of the Constitutional Court will not bring any fundamental resolution. “Although some may think that the competence lawsuit will clear things up, it may mean the exact opposite. It may happen that we will not be the wiser after the Constitutional Court makes a decision,” he said.
“I think it is always better to act and perhaps focus on the future than on the current tense situation,” added Tejc, adding that one decision of the Constitutional Court cannot establish a precedent for the future for all situations that may arise.
According to him, we can wait for new jurisprudence, but at the same time find out that the matter should be solved by political means and not by a competence dispute.
